I broadly want to +1 this. A lot of the evidence you are asking for probably just doesn’t exist, and in light of that, most people should have a lot of uncertainty about the true effects of any overton-window-pushing behavior.
That being said, I think there’s some non-anecdotal social science research that might make us more likely to support it. In the case of policy work:
Anchoring effects, one of the classic Kahneman/Tversky biases, have been studied quite a bit, and at least one article calls it “the best-replicated finding in social psychology.” To the extent there’s controversy about it, it’s often related to “incidental” or “subliminal” anchoring which isn’t relevant here. The market also seems to favor a lot of anchoring strategies (like how basically everything on Amazon in “on sale” from an inflated MSRP), which should be a point of evidence that this genuinely just works.
In cases where there is widespread “preference falsification,” overton-shifting behavior might increase people’s willingness to publicly adopt views that were previously outside of it. Cass Sunstein has a good argument that being a “norm entrepreneur,” that is, proposing something that is controversial, might create chain-reaction social cascades. A lot of the evidence for this is historical, but there are also polling techniques that can reveal preference falsification, and a lot of experimental research that shows a (sometimes comically strong) bias toward social conformity, so I suspect something like this is true. Could there be preference falsification among lawmakers surrounding AI issues? Seems possible.
Also, in the case of public advocacy, there’s some empirical research (summarized here) that suggests a “radical flank effect” whereby overton-window shifting activism increases popular support for moderate demands. There’s also some evidence pointing the other direction. Still, I think the evidence supporting is stronger right now.
P.S. Matt Yglesias (as usual) has a good piece that touches on your point. His takeaway is something like: don’t engage in sloppy Overton-window-pushing for its own sake — especially not in place of rigorously argued, robustly good ideas.
I broadly want to +1 this. A lot of the evidence you are asking for probably just doesn’t exist, and in light of that, most people should have a lot of uncertainty about the true effects of any overton-window-pushing behavior.
That being said, I think there’s some non-anecdotal social science research that might make us more likely to support it. In the case of policy work:
Anchoring effects, one of the classic Kahneman/Tversky biases, have been studied quite a bit, and at least one article calls it “the best-replicated finding in social psychology.” To the extent there’s controversy about it, it’s often related to “incidental” or “subliminal” anchoring which isn’t relevant here. The market also seems to favor a lot of anchoring strategies (like how basically everything on Amazon in “on sale” from an inflated MSRP), which should be a point of evidence that this genuinely just works.
In cases where there is widespread “preference falsification,” overton-shifting behavior might increase people’s willingness to publicly adopt views that were previously outside of it. Cass Sunstein has a good argument that being a “norm entrepreneur,” that is, proposing something that is controversial, might create chain-reaction social cascades. A lot of the evidence for this is historical, but there are also polling techniques that can reveal preference falsification, and a lot of experimental research that shows a (sometimes comically strong) bias toward social conformity, so I suspect something like this is true. Could there be preference falsification among lawmakers surrounding AI issues? Seems possible.
Also, in the case of public advocacy, there’s some empirical research (summarized here) that suggests a “radical flank effect” whereby overton-window shifting activism increases popular support for moderate demands. There’s also some evidence pointing the other direction. Still, I think the evidence supporting is stronger right now.
P.S. Matt Yglesias (as usual) has a good piece that touches on your point. His takeaway is something like: don’t engage in sloppy Overton-window-pushing for its own sake — especially not in place of rigorously argued, robustly good ideas.
Yeah, this is all pretty compelling, thanks!